The by-standers looked at one another, but no one answered in the affirmative.  One man at last found words to say, “Why, he’s tryin’ to help hisself along, and we’re watchin’ to see how he’ll succeed.  Now, I was along by his place this mornin’, an’ seen him carryin’ in the last wood from his wood-pile.  ‘Sam,’ I hollered, ’don’t you want to buy a load of wood?  I’ve got some I want to sell.’  ‘I need it,’ said Sam, ‘but I ain’t got a cent.’  Well, mebbe I’d have trusted him for a load if he’d asked me, but it occurred to me to stand off an’ see how he’d manage it.  It’s cold weather now, an’ if he don’t get it some way, his family’ll go cold.  I went by there again at noon-time, but he hadn’t got none yit.”

“He’s as independent like,” said another, “as if he hadn’t never been in jail.”

“You’re a pack of heartless hogs!” roared the farmer, getting into his wagon and driving off.

“Can’t see that he’s any different from the rest of us,” muttered one of the by-standers.

Could the group have known the trouble in the new cobbler’s heart, as he bent all day over his work and thought of the needed wood, their interest in the subject would have been enhanced.  Sam’s wife was a cold-blooded creature; the baby was somewhat ailing; it would not do for the fire to go out, yet the fuel he had carried in at morn could not more than last until evening.  The little money that had come into the shop during the day would barely purchase some plain food, of which there was never in the house a day’s supply.  He had not the courage to ask credit for wood; his occasional attempts to “get trusted” had all failed, no matter how small the article wanted.  He looked for Larry Highgetty, his employer, to beg a small loan, but Larry, though he came into the shop every morning for his share of the previous day’s earnings, could not be found that afternoon.

Suddenly, when the sun was almost down, Sam remembered that a house was being built several squares away.  Carpenters always left many scraps behind them, which village custom allowed anyone to pick up.  The cobbler devoutly thanked heaven for the thought, closed the shop, and hurried away to the new building.  The men were still at work, and there was a great deal of waste lying about.

“May I have some of these leavin’s?” asked Sam of the master builder.

The man looked down from the scaffolding on which he stood, recognized the questioner, turned again to his work, and at last answered, with a scowl,—­

“Yes, I suppose so.  It would be all the same, I guess, if I didn’t say so.  You’d come after dark and help yourself.”

Sam pocketed the insult, though the weight of it was heavy.  So was that of the bits of board he gathered; but he knew that such thin wood burned rapidly, so he took a load that made him stagger.  As he entered the yard behind his house, he saw, through the dusk which was beginning to gather, a man rapidly tossing cord-wood from a wagon to a large pile which already lay on the ground.